Andrew Milner

This book places cultural materialism in relation to earlier paradigms such as literary humanism and Marxism, and explains how the new paradigm has been applied to important areas such as cultural studies, media studies and literary studies.

A collection of original science fiction stories by such noted authors as Ray Bradbury, Ben Bova, and Kurt Vonnegut.

Locating Science Fiction is a major intervention in contemporary theoretical debates about science fiction as a literary, film and television genre and its relation to the immediately cognate genres of utopia, dystopia and fantasy. It asks and attempts to answer three general questions about science fiction: first, what was it? (a question that is addressed both positively, in relation to the genre itself, and negatively, in relation to utopia, dystopia and fantasy); second, when was it? That is, what was its time?; and third, where was it? that is, what was its geographical space? Through a comparative and historical framework that draws upon Raymond Williams' 'cultural materialism', Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of culture and Franco Moretti's application of world-systems theory to comparative literary studies, Milner delivers a critical tour-de-force that will push Science Fiction studies into new directions.